Calendar Girl (18 page)

“He’s good at his job Saz, I’ll give him that. Mr McAuley has never had the slightest problem with our boys, his staff of four are all highly qualified, very respectable – one manager, two cabinet makers and a secretary and every one of them pays their poll tax. I mean council tax. Or whatever it’s called now. They pay it.”

“OK big sister. Thanks for letting me know.”

“I do have some good news for you though.”

“What’s that? Judith told her parents?”

“Yeah really, and the Pope just married Mother Theresa. No, something much more pertinent – Annie Cox is looking for a lodger.”

“Police computers told you that?”

“No, you silly tart –
Capital Gay,
Accommodation Offered.”

“So?”

“So, now you’ve got the perfect excuse to see her. Not only do you have a mutual friend, you’re also dying to move into her house.”

“Thanks Hells. Inspector Morse has nothing on you.”

“I should hope not. Can’t stand bloody opera.”

Saz called Annie, mentioning both Caroline and the ad, and was promptly invited that afternoon for tea.

“Yes thanks Annie, I will have a slice of that lovely homemade gingerbread, and the name of Maggie Simpson’s girlfriend – if you don’t mind.”

Then everything happened very quickly. It was like the Christmas rush. Suddenly it creeps up on you and you find there’s hundreds of things you’ve forgotten. You’re not quite ready. You want to ask for just two more days. But you know they’d never give them to you.

Our first Christmas together had been amazing. Initially she’d been dead against our acknowledging it at all. No fir tree had ever decorated the hallowed halls of her mezuzah-protected abode. I told her Jesus was Jewish. She said a hanukiah would be pretty dangerous among all that straw in the stable. I explained that any teenage girl who could persuade her fiancé she’d been impregnated by the Holy Spirit could probably cope with the lack of a fire extinguisher. She still wasn’t convinced, so I explained the pagan roots of the festival and how Jesus was probably born in April anyway. Like most semi-Christians, I’m much better at explaining when Jesus was probably born, than how he came to be born at all. Besides which, how could such an influential man possibly be a Capricorn? No, he had to be April and Arian. (Though obviously not Aryan – I took pains to spell the word out loud.) Pagan festival established, we set to it with a will.

Tree, presents, mistletoe – all to my own family’s ritual specifications. No arguments here about what order things went, who did what. Not for us the endless rounds of – “Well, we always give out the presents in the morning” … “But my mother always makes her own brandy butter!”

A week before Christmas it was ready and we ran outside to look up at our handiwork. There in the big window of our second floor flat it blazed. Christmas tree with four different strands of electric light blinking on and off in syncopated time with the flickering candles of the hanukiah. Natural light and man-made light. Man made Light. Light made Man. The Catholic metaphor was lost on her.

For our Christmas breakfast we ate smoked salmon and latke. We began our lunch with chicken soup and ended it with plum pudding. And ate prawn crackers while we watched Dorothy fall asleep in the poppy field. Will that girl never learn?

This year our concession to the birthday festival was a sprig of mistletoe above the door in the hall. We didn’t want to make too much of a fuss about it, we just needed some time. To see if we could get together again. Or if we were destined to be flatmates forever. She still didn’t want to go back to work so I rang around a few places, left messages to say I was available to fill in for last minute cancellations. I waited for the phone to ring. And even dared to answer it. Lucky her mother didn’t call.

And the work rolled in. There’s always lots of work at this time of year. People want to be cheered up. They want to forget it’s cold and dark outside.

I know I do.

I came home late on Monday night. This Monday, the one just gone. After a gig. It was raining. His car was parked in the same place. Pissed me off. I hadn’t seen him for a few days and I thought maybe he’d gone away. I decided I’d had enough. A couple of beers and a good night’s work, applause still ringing in my ears had fired me up. I went up to the car. To tell him to go away. Whoever he was looking for wasn’t going to be coming out of Grange House at almost two o’clock in the morning. Only he wasn’t in the car. It was empty.

I was about to put my key in the door lock when I heard him. A man’s voice, raised, angry. And her – scared. I was trying to listen even as I was fumbling with the lock. I ran through the hall and into the kitchen. She was sitting at the kitchen table, her head in her hands. She looked like she’d been crying for hours. He was standing over her.

“Who the fuck are you?”

He looked up as I reached for the knife drawer. It was him. The man from the car. Not that I was really surprised. I’d almost expected him. He smiled at me but kept his hand tight on her shoulder.

“Come on September, introduce me to your little friend.” The bastard had an American accent, she just kept crying.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Maggie, just leave it. He was just going.”

“What? No English hospitality? No cup of tea?”

She stood up and shook herself free of his hand.

“Simon, piss off. There’s a witness here now. You can’t possibly deal with both of us. Just go.”

He stood there for a minute, like he was weighing up her words. Then he just smiled at me, turned, stroked her hair and kissed her on the forehead. She let him. She was very scared.

“Bye – ah – Maggie was it? Been nice meeting you.”

“Fuck off.”

“Charmed, I’m sure. Well, no doubt I’ll see you later. There’s a little unfinished business to deal with.”

And he left. Sauntered out the door like a Sunday afternoon stroll. He stopped just by the mistletoe in the hall, looked up at it and down at me. I reached past him and ripped it off the wall. I slammed the door and double locked it after him.

Back in the kitchen she was crying. Sobbing. And shaking. She was a real mess. I made tea, hot and sweet like on telly, wrapped her in a blanket and waited. It came out bit by bit. The place in New York. How she’d met him through a client, not long before she’d met me. It was like the John Clark thing. It appealed to her sense of mystery. She said for a long time it had only been the hostessing, but then one time when she’d really needed some money he’d asked her about taking some stuff to London for him. And she’d agreed. It was in an ornament. An ugly ornament like the ones she’d sometimes have around our place. She said it wasn’t at all safe, but that was part of it. The excitement. Her safe life with her parents, the safe mapped-out future they’d had for her – she said it was a way of subverting it – but without ever having to confront them. Sort of like being in the Resistance – only the cause was herself. And she’d been running these two other strands quite separately, except where one provided an excuse for the other. It was hard to believe. I’d swallowed the Clark story even where it was being a cover for this one. There were so many lies.

Too many lies.

But she didn’t see it like that. She thought it was exciting. The drugs thing scared me, I didn’t see how she could do it
so much and get away with it, but she said she’d probably only carried drugs for two or three of the fifteen or so New York trips she’d made. All of the others were clean and the customs people began to recognise her, used to wave her through. Besides, she was so often at the airport, to pick up clients, parties of tourists. Sometimes they took the stuff from her. Sometimes they were real tourists. Sometimes they weren’t. I made more tea.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I knew you’d hate it.”

“Oh? Whatever gave you that idea? Cocaine, hostessing – just the sort of thing I’m really happy for you to be doing. Clever you – you’re right. I hate it.”

“And I didn’t want to stop.”

“Not even for me?”

“Not even for myself.”

“You’re mad.”

“I know.”

“So what does he want?”

“He thinks I owe him some money.”

“Do you?”

“Sort of. I mean someone else really owes him the money, but he doesn’t believe me.”

“What?”

“The accident – it wasn’t an accident. I’d handed the stuff over like I was supposed to, only this time they wanted to pay me.”

“Don’t they usually?”

“God no. It’s too much money. It goes through someone else, or a business. I’m not sure, I only deliver. Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with me.”

“Only this time it did?”

“Yeah, they gave me the money – cash. I told them I couldn’t take it, but they said that if I didn’t then they’d never get around to paying. So I took it. It wasn’t like I had
a choice. Two hundred yards down the road I was knocked over by a motorbike. The ‘nice’ rider came to help me and took the cash. He knew where to get it from. He’d seen me put it in my bag ten minutes earlier.”

“I don’t get it. You put all that money away where someone could see you?”

“Yeah. In the house where they gave it to me. He was one of them. Watched me leave the house, got on his bike and knocked me over. Then he comes over to help – looks like he’s being a good Samaritan and going through my bag to get my name, when actually he’s taking the money. Then he goes off to call an ambulance. Only he doesn’t come back.”

“You should have got someone to stop him.”

“Oh yeah, right. ‘No luv, don’t mind my bruises and broken ribs, just stop that man from stealing from me. Yes, that’s right, the man who just nearly killed me.’ Yeah, that’d really work.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell the police?”

“What?”

“The truth.”

“That I’m a drug smuggler who needs help? Don’t be stupid – they don’t let you have secret Friday night dinners in Holloway. No, I worked it out for myself. I knew Simon would want the money and I arranged to borrow it from John. Or I figured I might offer to work at the club – for free, he could keep all my tips, I knew it would take a while but I’d do it eventually. And I’d tell him I wanted out of the couriering thing.”

“You borrowed the money from John Clark?”

“Yes. That’s what I said.”

“So why didn’t you give it to him then? To the American?”

“I was going to. But I wanted to talk to him first. Tell him I wanted to stop. Explain that I’d had enough. That
this time was the last I’d carry for him. He didn’t want to hear that. We’d had a big fight about it already – in New York. He wouldn’t listen. And I don’t even know if he believed me about the bike rider or not. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he already knew about it. Probably arranged it all himself as a way of making me stay with him. Anyway, that’s what we were fighting about when you came in.”

“Couldn’t you have phoned him? Did he have to come all the way from New York for you to tell him you’re quitting?”

“He’s in London on business. He has a business here too.”

“How convenient for him. And how nice of you to invite him over.”

“I’m not that stupid. He found out about the accident and got our address from the hospital.”

“They’re not allowed to give out information like that.”

“You’re not allowed to bring twelve ounces of cocaine into England hidden in a toy model of the Brooklyn Bridge either. People do.”

“Didn’t you get paid for all this drug smuggling?”

“Don’t call it that, it only happened a few times.”

“It’s still illegal.”

“Yeah sweetheart, so’s smoking dope and you’ve done that often enough.”

“It’s hardly in the same league. You must have been paid for it.”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“It went on flights back to New York. On our trips away, on presents for you – that rather nice antique silver ring you’re wearing for instance. It just went, all right? It went, money does. Now I’m practically broke, I’ve got to get this money to Simon and then find a way of paying John back.”

“How much did you borrow from him?”

“Too much.”

“Where is it?”

“In the bedroom. Between the mattress and the base. My side of the bed. Anyway, it doesn’t make any difference, he’ll come back for the money but he’s not going to let me go.”

“Don’t be daft, this isn’t the movies. In real life things like this get sorted out.”

“In real life people get killed for being late with payments.”

“In Columbia maybe.”

It went on for hours. Question, answer. Question, answer. Me trying to make it sound less scary than it was, both of us jumping at any sound outside. I couldn’t believe she’d been doing all this and I’d known nothing. But then it seemed I’d missed most things anyway. I realised we’d both been leading pretend lives. Hers and the “excitement” factor and mine with my belief that everything could be perfect if only we tried hard enough. Loved hard enough. We were standing in the lounge, watching the winter sun come up around the corner of the block opposite us and I had a sudden thought. A thought about how you can’t ever really know anyone. About how hard it is to even know yourself. About how easy it is to lie. And I asked her.

“Did you ever sleep with him?”

“Who?”

“The American.”

“Yes.”

“Since me?”

“Yes.”

I hit her. Just picked up my hand and hit her. Across the head. And as she fell – I watched it, watched it like it was
in slow motion, frame by frame. I watched her crack her head on the side of the mantelpiece. I heard her crack her head on the side of the mantelpiece. On the side of the cast iron mantelpiece it had taken us three days to strip. Strip down to the iron. Hard, cold iron. She fell on to the floor. It was eight o’clock in the morning.

I ran out of the door, not stopping to double-lock it. I walked around town for the day. Just walking. I stopped once for a cup of coffee – McDonalds I think, or Burger King – one of those horrible places anyway, where even your coffee smells of ground beef. It had been dark for a long time by the time I came home. I think it was about nine or ten. She was still there but when I looked in the bedroom the bed was all messed up and the money was gone. She lay where she’d fallen that morning. Only now she was cold.